Niagara’s Everlasting Voice by Joseph Rodman Drake

Cover image from The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems

How sweet ‘t would be, when all the air,
In moonlight swims along the river,
To couch upon the grass and hear
Niagara’s everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue West away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day —
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry
When o’er the brink the tide is driven,
As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven!